Sea Lion Portrait, Chester Zoo

Now that I have a longer zoom lens, I was looking forward to getting closer photographs of the animals on my last trip to Chester Zoo. Unfortunately the day was a little overcast but I was able to capture the above “portrait” of a California Sea Lion. When this picture was captured I was standing in a crowd of maybe 20-30 people watching this animal swim around his pool. He then came up quite close (within maybe 10 feet) and posed like this for about 5 minutes, watching us, looking left and right and “barking” loudly at us. The thing that really makes me want to share this image with you isn’t just the overall sharpness of it, but the way the water looks on the Sea Lion’s coat. The sheen created makes it almost give areas of the animal a high gloss look, processing the photograph into a monochrome only enhances this effect.